desert calendar - Desert Magazine of the Southwest

village in December, 1905. He and
his companions were suspicious of the
Indians, and camped a few miles down
the trail. During the night the Indians
stampeded their stock and concealed
North's buckskin riding mule in a
thicket, with an armed guard. But the
North party had better arms than the
natives, and by brandishing their weapons
were able to recover the mule
without bloodshed.
Despite the bad reputation which
historians have given these Indians we
had only the most friendly dealings
with them. From three or four to a
dozen of the men and women were
in our camp all the time we were at
Santa Catarina. They had every opportunity
to pilfer small items of equipment—but
nothing was missing.
At Aries' suggestion we had taken
along some used clothing and extra
groceries, and we did considerable
trading with them—both barter and
cash purchases—and in every instance
they left it to us to place a value on
the things they had to sell.
I asked Juan about their tribal
names, and learned that their community
included Cocopahs, Dieguenos,
Kaliwas and Pai-Pais—mostly the latter.
North and other writers refer to all
the Indians grouped about the old mission
site as Santa Catarinas. But when
I asked Juan if there were some Indians
of this name he did not seem
to understand what I was talking
about. My impression was that Santa
Catarina was the name given by the
padres to all the tribesmen in the area
surrounding the Mission Santa Catarina
de los Yumas—but that the Indians
themselves preferred to be known
by their tribal names. All the Indians
in the northern part of Baja California
are believed to have belonged to the
Yuman linguistic group, although the
Indians we met at Santa Catarina do
not in any sense regard themselves as
Yumas. At the time Pattie passed
through this region there was bitter
enmity between the Cocopahs and the
Pai-Pais. Today they pick cotton together
in the fields of the Colorado
delta.
There are two villages, the one
where we camped near the old mission
site, and another known as San
Miguel two miles away. Over the
ridge 12 miles to the northeast in Agua
Caliente Canyon is another little segment
of the tribe with Ramon Arvallo,
brother of Juan, as chief. (Desert Magazine,
July '51.)
The Indians live in crude but wellkept
thatched tulle and adobe huts.
They are making and using the same
kind of earthen pottery that archeologists
and pot-hunters find in the caves
on the Colorado desert—the pottery
JULY, 1 952
of the prehistoric Indians of Southern
California.
Some of my friends who have been
scrambling over the desert mountains
for years seeking caves with old Indian
pottery, could save shoe leather
by going down to Santa Catarina where
they can buy all the ollas they want,
of identical make, at from 10 to 20
pesos each. A peso is now worth
about 11 cents in U. S. coin.
The men at Santa Catarina braid
very fine cowhide riatas. The women
make carrying bags, woven like a
small hammock, of agave fiber. These
are slung over their backs and serve
many purposes in a community where
there are no wheels for transportation.
I also discovered a utensil that was
new to me. It is a small netting bag,
about gallon size, which the Indians
said they used to get the spines off of
Above—Aries Adams, Malcolm Huey and Bill Sherrill of the Santa Catarina
expedition. The ollas are being made by the Indians, as their ancestors
made them for many generations. The Yucca fiber net is a carrying bag—
a useful tool in a remote village where there are no wheels.
Below—Ghost remains of the old mining camp at Alamo, where millions
in gold have been recovered in the last 75 years.
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